covid quarantine era quilting

My goodness, the world has certainly turned upside down since I was last in this space. For a lot of people, quarantine in the Covid Era seems to have meant lots of project time and profuse productivity. Not for me. But I have had a few bouts of quilting time over the last few months. Here’s the update on my quilting during Covid so far. 

I finally got myself into gear and unpicked a lot of tension-issue problems on this Étoile de Patisserie quilt for my 2nd daughter. That was a nasty chore that had me avoiding a finish for several months. Once I got the messy stuff removed, I was able to requilt those areas. Soooo much knot burying. Glad that’s behind me!

Then I finally quilted this other Stella Grande quilt called Guys and Dolls. More Aurifil 12wt chunky big stitch machine quilting for this one. 

While my husband spent some time camping with our youngest daughter in early June, I got to spend some quilting time at home with D4. She pieced her first project in a long time - her first baby quilt in a basic 4 square pattern. We enjoyed working in tandem after I rearranged my sewing area to accommodate a second machine.

I was on a quilting roll at this point and got Cheery (Easter) quilt echo quilted around all the boxes. I’d like to add some handquilting to this one, too. 

This Fall Log Cabin quilt also got some quick, zippy straightline quilting In chunky Aurifil 12wt. I chose Brass (top color), of course, because it seems to go with everything. 

My coins quilt, which I’ve named “Collins” after the design inspiration Megan Collins, was a quick and easy quilting finish in modern loops. Oh, I do love this one.

D4 had so much fun working on that baby quilt that we took advantage of a sale at our local shop and got her some more fabric for another baby quilt and a few stash items. I’m happy to see this girl sewing again. She used to be my quilt buddy, always helping me with anything she could do. Her interest waned for a while and her younger sister stepped in as my quilting companion. It’s nice to have her around the sewing room again. 

Once I got quilting, there wasn’t any stopping me. I knocked out a bunch of straightline quilting for my Guys and Dolls Improv quilt, adding my 5th quilt to the Ready To Bind Pile. I used several colors of thread on this quilt, which shows up nicely and makes for interesting effects in person. If you look closely, you can see a thread I laid out on top of the blue and pink squares on the left; same thread, different look depending on the color its with. And on the right you might notice the white thread that shows up clearly on the navy square but basically disappears in the stripes. It worked that way over the whole quilt which adds so much visual interest, I think.

Would you believe that I trimmed all 5 of these quilts in 24 hours? Once I had the cutting mat set on the floor, I just kept at it until these were all trimmed. That was quite satisfying! I think I like batch processing multiple quilts at the same time. 

On to batch binding next. 

I was a very good girl and pushed through all those chores towards several finishes, but that didn’t stop me from starting one more new project. I was inspired by a couple of yellow-and-low-volume-HST projects on IG. I’m making a simple Flying Geese layout for my 4.5” HSTs.

Putting all this together in one place makes it look as if my quarantine time was quite productive after all. That’s not really true when it comes to my quilt life, but I’ll take it.